Why I Hate Elves – Design Apathy

 There’s a version of this where I say “I don’t actually hate elves”—that this is a metaphor, or a provocation, or a bit of theater. But I won’t. I hate them.

Not because they’re glitter slugs or overused, though they are. Not because they’re a cultural Frankenstein stitched together from Germanic folklore, Victorian poetry, and 20th-century marketing, though that’s also true. I hate elves because of what they represent: the creative floor that too many designers stop on. Elves are the duct tape of fantasy worldbuilding. They’re not here to enrich, they’re here to patch holes and to embrace the familiar instead of embracing the weird.

And the problem isn’t just elves. It’s what choosing elves says about a creatives willingness to take risks.

The elf, in its current form, is a design surrender. Once, these creatures were supernatural forces of illness, seduction, power, and fear. They weren’t noble or wise. They were dangerous. They were folklore's unknowable “other”. But somewhere between Shakespeare’s trickster sprites and Tolkien’s immortal supermodels, elves became fantasy’s comfort food. They are safe. They are expected. They are a blank canvas wearing a costume and calling it lore.

Need something magical? Pointy ears.
Need something “ancient and elegant”? Pointy ears, slow speech.
Need a species you can make ten subtypes of to pretend your game world is rich? Spin the wheel. Blood elves. Deep elves. Steampunk elves. Sea elves. Goth elves. Eldrich elves. You’re not building culture—you’re just tagging templates.

This is where immersive design, and LARP especially, finds itself trapped. When the pressure is on to “make something mystical,” we don’t reach for bold originality, but for familiarity dressed up with a little flair. But what’s worse is that repetition isn’t the enemy. Stagnation is.

Because what’s really happening here is stagnation caused by fear. The fear that a wholly original concept might not land. That your world might not be “understood” unless you anchor it to something recognizably Elvish. And in doing so, you not only flatten the creative potential of your setting—you teach your players that imagination lives within a set of allowable shapes.

This isn’t just a callout to writers. This is about immersive design. Scene setting. World cohesion. NPC creation. Cultural immersion. When you introduce elves into your world, ask yourself: what are they doing that a fully unique culture couldn’t do better? What narrative weight are they carrying that couldn't be handled by a new construct that reflects your themes and values?

LARP is one of the few artistic mediums where the world you create is experienced in the body. People walk through it. Eat in it. Speak inside it. That demands more from our design than aesthetic mimicry. If you’re just creating Fantasy Clone 9981 with elf ears and soft ambient music, then congratulations—you’re in the business of nostalgia, not narrative. And look, it’s not that every world needs to reinvent the wheel. But if your first magical instinct is “add elves,” then the real question is: what story are you too scared to tell instead?

Elves, as they exist now in most immersive and fantasy games, are a product of genre safety. They’re the narrative equivalent of bland comfort food. Easy to serve. Easy to recognize. Easy to digest. But you can’t live on mashed potatoes forever, and the longer your world leans on old scaffolding, the less it will say anything meaningful about the human experience it’s meant to explore. Elves were once feared. Dangerous. They represented invisible forces that could ruin crops or seduce your soul. They were folklore’s metaphor for the unexplainable. They were once new and powerful concepts. Unfortunately when elves were new and powerful concepts it was the 13th and 14th century. Now they’re Instagram models with +2 Dexterity.

I understand the allure of writing something safe. There are many reasons why sometimes it feels like there are more larp academics and larp influencers in the world than larp writers and larp runners. It is socially and emotionally safer to approach the hobby as an academic, critic, or influencer than it is to be willing to create content and put it out in the world for scrutiny and criticism (thats another blog).

There’s comfort in using elves. Its source material that is less likely to draw ire and it provides a predictability that feels like protection. When you’re working in a medium as labor-intensive, expensive, and socially vulnerable as LARP, the instinct to hedge your bets isn’t just understandable, it’s pragmatic. LARP in the U.S. is still niche. It demands enormous investment not just in time and logistics, but in emotional and social capital. Building a game means exposing yourself to scrutiny, managing community dynamics, and shouldering the weight of expectation (both realistic and unrealistic) from players who’ve traveled, paid, and committed to something you created. That’s not a small ask. So of course it’s tempting to reach for something that feels familiar. Of course it’s tempting to write what’s already been accepted, already been played, already “works.”

There’s value in that, too. Not everything has to be a revolution. Sometimes the goal is to create something that will be understood, appreciated, and engaged with and doing that often means speaking in a language your audience already knows. Fantasy tropes, familiar cultures, common archetypes, they offer a sense of entry. They lower the barrier of comprehension and help players feel at home faster. And when you’re launching a new game, especially on limited resources, every inch of approachability can help carry you across the finish line. Designing for success isn’t a weakness. It’s a strategy. But even strategies need to be examined, because what’s safest for us as designers isn’t always what’s best for the worlds we’re trying to build or the creative community we are trying to build.

Take the risk. Create something new. Use magic, real magic, in your design thinking. Stop playing fantasy Mad Libs with aesthetic templates. Stop building safe. Safe doesn’t last. Safe doesn’t move people. Safe doesn’t get remembered.

And I hate that more than I hate elves.